The language of everyday communication in an unusual study of Letters from Africa by Henryk Sienkiewicz

The article discusses the selected elements of the style presented in Letters from Africa by Henryk Sienkiewicz. The analysis of the lexical-phraseological and the syntactic layers of the text demonstrates that in Letters from Africa the artistic language is consciously created and functional. Its characteristic, stylistic feature is the extensive use of colloquial language, fixed, idiomatic phrases, proverbs and proverbial expressions. Therefore, such use of lexicon and phraseology refers to the traditional trends of the Polish language, the vivid language of everyday communication. What strikes the readers is the quantitative as well as the qualitative abundance of this type of marked units of language. This verbal layer, inextricably linked with the everyday language of the Polish people, is subject to the artistic syntactic rules characteristic of the rhetorical style. The skillful combination of two stylistic features is a testimony to the high value of the text: on the one hand, simplicity and moderation in the lexical-phraseological layer; on the other hand, abundance and poetic elegance which are present mainly in the syntactic layer. Thus, Letters from Africa reflect the language of common, everyday communication in an uncommon study.Publikacja finansowana przez Wydział Filologiczny Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego oraz Zakład Wodociągów i Kanalizacji Sp. z o.o. w Łodz